US special ops just got 350 kamikaze drones to fight ISIS in Iraq

A
member of the US Army take position at the US section of a base
for Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga forces in Makhmour,
southeast of Mosul, Iraq, December 23, 2016.REUTERS/Khalid al Mousily

After an urgent request earlier this year, US special forces were
just given 350 kamikaze drone missiles to help fight ISIS in
Iraq, Defense One reported.

The drones, called Switchblades, are fired from bazooka-like
launchers and have cameras and a
cursor-on-targetGPSnavigation. They
can stay airborne for approximately 15 minutes and at speeds
up to 100 MPH.

AeroVironment, which makes the Switchblades, describes them
as a "miniature flying lethal missile" that can be "operated
manually or autonomously."

Special ops forces, whose presence and
role in places like Iraq and Syria have steadily grown,
say they need newer and bigger drone missiles to blow up bigger
targets and quickly hit non-state enemies like ISIS.

"We have a good capability right now with the Switchblade.
But it’s got a smaller payload. How do you get a little larger?"
said Army Col. John Reim, who heads SOCOM's Warrior program
office, as Defense One notes. "We’re trying to create organic
firepower and situational awareness in so many of the places we
operate in."

In response, SOCOM plans to open a lab in Tampa Bay to
broaden the SOFWERX initiative and help
drive innovation.

But the US military isn't alone in creating new
drones. SOCOMcommander Gen. Ray Thomas,
while visiting Mosul, said he met two operators who had "found an
off-the-shelf rotary-wing quadcopter adapted by ISIS weaponeers
to carry a 40 mm weapon," Defense One reported.

Muhammad Hamed/Reuters

“This is how adaptive the enemy was,” Thomas said. “About five or
six months ago, it was a day that the Iraqi effort almost came to
a screeching halt. Literally in the span of 24 hours, there were
up to 70 drones in the air. At one time, 12 ‘killer bees,’ if you
will, right overhead.”

Around that time, SOCOM started
working with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab to convert IED
detectors and jammers into drone jammers.